May 26, 2014

No Time to Text? Say It With Stickers

Sticker-based apps like Line and WeChat have transformed mobile messaging in Asia, but they have been slow to catch on in North America. [via The New York Times]

Tokyo start-up Line, along with WeChat from China, has sought to pepper the messaging experience with an array of stickers, social games and even weather forecasts. Their sprawling online offerings make them huge distribution platforms for content, not just messaging services. “It’s messaging, evolved,” said Takeshi Idezawa, Line’s chief operating officer.

Line has signed up 430 million users, almost 90 percent of them outside Japan. (It does not break out the number of active users.) WhatsApp said in February that it had 465 million monthly active users, while WeChat’s parent company, Tencent, said its number of monthly active users reached 355 million at the end 2013.